Once COTD had established itself, its few members realized how rare and precious it was to be in a situation with so much musical freedom, so we gradually came to a vague concensus that to impose furtherstructure on it would be inappropriate. There was some talk of imposing very minimal structure, to help the music along a bit. We hmmm'd and errrr'd and nodded and agreed 'in theory', but it never really came together. Occasionally we would experiment with, say, a particular rhythm, but only rarely have we done anything that premeditated. The overriding ethos has been to let the entity we call COTD evolve in its own way. It has become apparent that any subgroup of Droners who want to play structured music can create a side-project with whatever structure it might choose. This is already happening.

It's now clear that COTD has a life of its own, that no one can have ownership over it. Any one of us could cease to be involved for whatever reason, and the organism would almost certainly continue along its evolutionary trajectory. If it gets too big, or if the ubiquitous "musical differences" emerge, then it's conceivable that an organism like COTD could undergo some kind of cellular mitosis, and become two separate collectives, peacefully existing side-by-side, even interacting. This image of cells splitting brings to mind the possibility of a 'super-organism' eventually emerging, consisting of improvisational musical cells in a dynamic, organic network, exchanging ideas, inspiration and even musicians. The nervous system is already in place (modern communications technology), we just need to start growing some cells.

The organism seems to be developing a sort of mind, i.e. a COTD group mind appears to be gradually emerging. One could think of this as a kind of "collective musical telepathy": in the midst of improvisation, we're increasingly likely to 'know' (in some sense) where each other is about to take the music. This has allowed a noticeable increase in musical coherence. The perfect metaphor is a flock of birds or school of fish. The indidivual birds and fish are separate entities, like individual musicians, but when you see them almost simultaneously undertake the same sharp change in direction, it's hard to deny that there is some kind of "collective intelligence" in evidence (however you might attempt to explain it). This is the sort of thing which appears to be gradually emerging. We could avoid invoking "telepathy" and alternatively say that we're all building up mental profiles of each others' "musical vocabularies" and modes of expression, thereby allowing increased fluidity and coherence in the music.